Friday Links 17-12-2010

I’ve blogged a lot about the juggling act of mothering and writing (mostly under my Mama Writer tag), but new mum Diana Peterfreund has summed the topic up beautifully in a blog post entitled “Two Professions.” She’s absolutely right about the similarity of unhelpful/constraining/overly specific advice that new mothers and new writers receive, and the filters you have to develop to find what will work for you.

Meanwhile, the first piece of promotion for upcoming ABC “gay geek sitcom” Outland, written by Boxcutters’ own John Richards, was on i09 of all places! I have been fascinated to listen to John’s updates on the podcast on getting a show made, including such gems as how to rewrite scripts about a Star Trek fan club without actually mentioning Star Trek because it makes the lawyers nervous, or how to stage an entire gay pride parade for a day’s filming (hint: Twitter!)

I raised my eyebrows a bit about the whole Big Bang Theory comparison, mostly because I find that show quite alienating as a woman (I am coming around to it but the first episode I saw was so offensive to my feminist sensibilities that I bounced off HARD and it’s difficult to recover from something like that) and I am trusting John to do a better job of making a show I want to watch! Though for his sake obviously it would be awesome if the show did as well as Big Bang Theory… I think it’s vaguely promising at least that while there is only one female main character in the show, she is gay and a geek as well as the male cast, which includes her in the premise rather than the weird ‘smart people to the left, pretty people to the right’ vibe that Big Bang Theory gives off.

Also I don’t remember if I linked to this already, but Rowena has done a huge interview with me (possibly it wasn’t that huge before I got my hands on the questions, but I talk a LOT) over at the Ripping Ozzie Reads blog, and if you can make it to the end I am giving away a free copy of Power and Majesty and Siren Beat.